How a Factory Fire in 1911 Relates to Endpoint Management and Data Breaches in 2018
On March 25, 1911 a fire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company building in New York City killed 146 garment workers.
Investigators found that the fire was entirely preventable. The oily rags, locked doors, and poor working conditions that were found to be the cause, were all easily correctable and within the purview of the owners of the factory.
The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories all over the country, and led to a series of city, state, and federal laws and regulations enacted to better protect the safety of workers.
What does this story have to with endpoint management and date breaches?
Recently, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a staff report on Equifax’s data breach that affected 143 million U.S. consumers on September 7, 2017. The committee concluded that the situation that led to the breach was easily correctable, meaning the loss of authenticating details, such as birthdates and social security numbers of more than half of all American consumers was entirely preventable.
The Triangle fire was about locked doors, but the Equifax breach was about open ones, specifically, systems that were open and not patched, per software manufacturer recommendations. Patches that were easily accessible and downloadable by software users and IT departments, including Equifax’s own IT department.
The committee concluded that Equifax knew of the potential security risk posed by unpatched systems, but did nothing. The committee further suggested that US corporations adopt a national data security standard, with civil and criminal penalties for failure to adhere to standards.
You might be saying, “we’ll never get Congress to pass national data breach standards.” But, the issue might be too large to ignore:
- 3 billion Yahoo accounts compromised in 2013
- 145 million eBay users compromised in 2014
- 80 million health records stolen from Anthem in 2015
- 57 million driver and customer data comprised from Uber in 2016
- 143 million users data comprised from Equifax in 2017
- 500 million customer records stolen from Marriott in 2018
We know this doesn’t end with the Marriott breach. There will be more data breaches to come, with voters now calling their representatives and demanding change.
In 2019, the House of Representatives will have a new majority. The Democratic Party will control the gavel, a party that advocates for consumer protection and traditionally supports more business regulation.
National data security standards are coming, but you don’t have to wait to take action:
- Are there unmanaged endpoints in your network?
- Are your system patches up to date, for both PC and Mac?
- Do you know how many Mac computers are on your network?
- Do your Mac users manage updates and patches themselves?
Parallels wants to talk to you about Mac endpoints and potential data breach, and how we can help.
Schedule a time today:
